Most big funding rounds shrink the founders’ slice. Skello’s just grew it. The profitable French HR startup has raised €200m to go shopping across Europe.
Paris-based Skello has raised €200m led by Bridgepoint, EU-Startups reports. The unusual part: its founders and managers came out owning more of the company, not less, as Tech Funding News noted. Existing backers Partech and XAnge reinvested, and Bridgepoint becomes the largest outside shareholder.
Raising from strength
Skello can pull that off because it does not need the money to survive. The company turned profitable in 2025 and crossed €50m in annual recurring revenue this year. It builds AI-powered scheduling and HR software for frontline teams. They make up roughly 55 per cent of Europe’s workforce, a group digital tools long overlooked.
Quitterie Mathelin-Moreaux and Emmanuelle Fauchier-Magnan, both Partech alumni, founded Skello in 2016. It now serves about 30,000 businesses and 700,000 daily users, from small restaurants to Starbucks and Intermarché. The 400-person team works from hubs in Paris, Lille and Barcelona.
A European shopping list
Skello has earmarked the money for offence. Alongside AI investment and hiring, it wants to fund acquisitions. That means a roll-up of smaller rivals in what Bridgepoint calls a “largely underserved and fragmented” market. The plan adds about 100 hires in 2026 across tech, data and sales.
Its weapon is Skello Assistant, an AI agent launched in 2025 that flags overtime, fixes payroll mismatches and drafts compliant rotas. The founders stress it augments managers rather than replacing them. They claim it saves each one about 35 hours a month.
Why it matters
Rivals crowd the frontline-workforce market. Spain’s Factorial raised $150m at a $2.5bn valuation in June, and Sweden’s Quinyx has taken more than $100m.
Few of them, though, pair Skello’s profitability with a war chest built for buying, not surviving. That gives the female-led French firm a rare shot at becoming a European champion in a fragmented software category.
The catch: it must turn a home-market lead into real cross-border expansion. That is the test now.
